Monday (22 Feb) - Quel'Delar

Monday (22 Feb) - Quel'Delar

A couple of days ago Wild got re-acquainted with a quest chain that could get him to a weapon upgrade that he sorely needs. Wild has completed six of the 13 required quests in the chain, but quests 7-9 all require dungeon runs.

The first part is a quest called "Reforging the Sword" and to accomplish that quest Wild has to enter the dungeon Pit of Saron (PoS). The quest can be done in the normal mode (ie, Heroic mode isn't required). There were hints that this quest could be soloed, and Wild decided to give it a try.

The first part of the quest required collecting five items scattered about the dungeon. This would be a pain to do in a random group, as it would require slowing down the group every time Wild needed to go collect an item. Instead, Wild entered the dungeon alone. Wild shifted to cat form and went stealth. To my left and to my right along a rocky ledge some distance away were two of the items Wild needed. In front of Wild were around five mobs, one of which was a level 80 elite. Wild figured that if he had to he could kill the elite and the grouping of non-elites, but first I tried to stealth my way to the items. Wild started with the right side, and was able to get the item. However, as soon as I picked it up, it triggered the start of the event. A number of npcs appeared, started ranting about something, and Wild decided to leave before things could get out of hand.

I reset the dungeon and re-entered. This time Wild tried the left side, and when he picked up the item nothing happened. Cool. I then reversed course, went back to the right and picked up the other one. Again, the event started and Wild left the dungeon. I now had three items, though. Wild reset and returned, picking up the other two he needed. Piece of cake.

Wild didn't really know his way around in PoS, but I decided to go exploring in cat form stealth to see if I could find the boss that was the next target of the quest. Wild slipped past a group of mobs, avoided a patrol, and located a stairway that I figured probably led to the boss. The long rocky lane that led to the stairway was lined with non-elites on one side, and the lane itself was patrolled by two elite dragons. Aggroing any of the non-elites would most assuredly aggro the elites, so Wild's only choice was to clamber about on the opposite side, along a ridge of rock that dropped down to more bad guys below, should Wild miss-step and fall off.

Getting by the elites was a bit tricky, but Wild managed it without aggroing anything. Wild stealthed up to the top of the stairs he'd spied out, and there was the boss, Forgemaster Garfrost. Garfrost was a level 82 boss elite. There were four packs of non-elite mobs scattered about the area. Aggroing any of them aggroes them all, including the boss. To complete the quest, Wild had to kill Garfrost, take his hammer, and then use the nearby anvil to reforge the sword using the hammer and the broken hilt Wild had gotten from an earlier quest. Garfrost is a frost giant, and much of his attacks are frost based, including a stacking debuff that is quite deadly. Garfrost also throws boulders. Big ones. And has four more frost based attacks. Pallies and death knights claim to be able to solo Garfrost in normal mode. Some claim that stacking frost resistant gear helps. Wild could craft frost resist gear, and take him on. Let's see, Garfrost has 500,000 health. Wild has 20,000. Being generous, Wild might average 3,000 damage per second. Wild started mumbling to himself - 3k into 500k, hmm, drop the zeroes, forget the fractions, umm, that comes out to about three minutes to kill him. Of course, wild has to heal, too, so maybe 2k damage would be more realistic. More mumbling, and that works out to something over five minutes, so let's round up to six. Meanwhile, Garfrost is doing damage to Wild. Let's see, there is the AoE frost damage that stacks, which after Wild get a boulder thrown at him he can hide behind to drop the stack. But while hiding he's getting Deep Freeze and Chilling Wave, and then twice during the fight the damage doubles. So, so 3k damage per second in the first third of the fight, halved by the frost resist gear, and then doubled up twice. This is getting complicated. Since Wild theoretically can kill him, given six minutes, let's see if Wild can theoretically stay alive that long.

First two minutes: 3k damage
Second two minutes: 6k damage
Third two minutes: 12k damage

That's 21k damage, and assuming some healing in there theoretically Wild could outlast him. Piece of cake. Ha. I think I'm really underestimating the damage and over estimating how much damage Wild could deal while getting pummelled and chased by Garfrost while running from boulders.

Did Wild try it? No. Not this time, anyway. Maybe Wild will make that frost gear. Maybe Wild will drag DER into this to tank. :P

Wild's next option was to check the with guild, but they were busy with ICC or some other silly thing. Wild decided to go into dungeon finder and select normal mode Pit of Saron. Wild even set his spec to healing to ensure getting a quicker group.

Five minutes later the call came. When Wild arrived in the dungeon, though, something wasn't right. It took a moment for it to sink in, then Wild addressed the group.

"weird, this isn't the instance I signed up for," a perplexed Wild told them. Wild was standing in the Halls of Reflection, and a quick check revealed that it was Heroic mode.

There was a long pregnant pause from the rest of the group. No one said anything, likely thinking, "crap, we are going to lose our healer."

Wild sighed. "but ok," I said, resigned to healing a random group with what I hoped were some decent players. The paladin tank whispered Wild a thank you. For staying.

The first part of the fight was a number of waves of mobs with boss fights in between. The tank was fine, but two of the DPS could not manage aggro and at least one of them would die on each wave. On one wave we had to manage with only three players, as we couldn't get dead players rezzed in time between waves and Wild's battle rez was still on cooldown. Wild did what he could to help the DPSers, but I made sure of two things first - the tank lived, and so did Wild. That ensured there would be no wipe, even if the fight took awhile. We survived. The second part of the fight is a chase that's fun and easy, and we finished the instance. Wild has done PoS three times now, twice as the healer. Loot in PoS on heroic is ilevel 232. Wild needs very little from there, but a cloth belt dropped that had both crit and haste that would probably help Wild's moonkin spec. I rolled greed on it. The shaman in the group complained that the loot system would not let him bid on it (not sure why not) but as a result Wild got it. Not to mention Wild got two frost emblems and some triumph emblems out of it. So it wasn't a complete waste of time.

Why did Wild not get the dungeon he asked for? Well, once I thought about it it was obvious. Wild had already "done" PoS that night. Not completed it of course, but I was in there, and had initiated the event, so DF was not going to assign that dungeon to Wild.

Also on Monday night Philly was able to collect her fourth JC token, and bought the recipe for Runed Cardinal Ruby. Not only that, but JB did a transmute to get a cardinal ruby so Philly could actually use the recipe. The cut gem then went to Wild so he could equip it in the new belt he got from PoS. See how all those things tie together?

Oh yea, Philly is now 31% of the way to level 75.

Oh yea again, Wild still has to go back to PoS to get the dang quest done.